He only hoped that he wasn't too late to join the fun.
"I'm going on. You want to take a hike, feel free," he told his guide.
"Where should I go?" asked Humphrey, sounding timid now.
"Your call," he said. "Just stay the hell out of my way."
Remo left the old man standing in the darkness and moved through the night swiftly, his ears and instincts leading him. He made less sound in passing than a night breeze whispering among the trees. No man would hear him coming.
The sounds ahead of him began to change, grew even more bizarre. Instead of cheering, shouts and laughter now, it sounded more like gagging, interspersed with coughs and garbled curses.
Remo was picking up his pace when yet another sound erupted in the night. Staccato, sharp, like heavy-metal thunder. Gunfire.
What kind of party did these wack-job pirates throw, anyway?
CHIUN WAS IRRITATED. He had hoped his special stew would buy himself more time for the treasure hunt while Remo dawdled, but the arrival of guntoting South Americans spoiled his plans.
Now he would have to find and protect Stacy Armitage. He couldn't let her be shot. He would never hear the end of it.
He moved through the camp, a shadow flitting amid the chaos.
A pirate lurched into his path. This one hadn't been wounded yet, but suffered only from the effects of Chiun's culinary masterpiece. He had already emptied out his stomach, judging from the dark stains on his chin and faded denim shirt, but that didn't prevent his doubling over, retching with the dry heaves.
Chiun was merciful. He sent the buccaneer to his reward with a stroke that was barely more than a caress. At that, it was enough to whip the pirate's head around and snap his neck as if he were a chicken. When he landed in the grass he was already dead, the cramping in his stomach mercifully forgotten.
Chiun pressed on, here dodging bullets from the forest, there dispatching pirates as he met them, with a touch, a jab, a kick. He left a trail of broken mannequins behind him, lying twisted where they fell.
When he had almost reached the prison hut, a burst of automatic rifle fire streaked through the air above his head and stitched its way across the hut's thatched roof. Inside, a woman screamed-not Stacy Armitage; Chiun would have recognized her voice. As he gained the doorstep of the hut, one of the three young hostages who had been here before him rushed outside.
Chiun didn't know her name, but he recognized her as the one who had withdrawn into herself, as if from shock. Whatever else she had become, the woman hadn't lost her voice entirely, nor had she forgotten how to run. In fact, if Chiun hadn't been there to stop her, she would certainly have run into the middle of the firefight, to her almost certain death.
The girl was several inches taller than Chiun, and she outweighed him by as much as thirty pounds, but she seemed weightless as he looped an arm around her waist and whisked her back inside. The other three, including Stacy Armitage, stood gaping at him in surprise.
"Robin!" the blonde spit out. "What's wrong with you?"
"Chiun, can we get out of here?" The question came from Stacy. She stood watching him, arms crossed, hands clasping her elbows as if to stop herself from trembling. "Well, can we?"
It didn't sit well with Chiun to leave before the job was finished, but it sounded very much as if the buccaneers were being massacred without his help.
"This way," he said, and moved directly to the side of the hut that was farthest from the door, farthest from the gunfire rattling outside.
Its roof aside, the hut was built of scrap lumber.
The wall he chose was plywood, and it shivered at his touch. He took a step back from the wall, examined it and lashed out with one hand. The steelstrong blades of his fingernails slashed through the plywood once, twice. A freshly made archway was left as the wood pieces fell to the earth.
Chiun turned to face the four women, his face impassive.
"Now we go," he said.
KIDD TRACKED ONE OF THE raiders with his revolver, framed the runner in his sights and squeezed off two quick shots. Though he had never seen the man before, it pleased him greatly when his bullets struck and spun him in his tracks, dumping him facedown into the dust.
Some of his men were starting to recover, fighting back in something that recalled their old, familiar style. The sickness that had gripped so many of them earlier still sapped their energy and made their movements awkward, but they clearly recognized the danger that confronted them, and those still fit to use a gun or blade would not go down without a fight.
The first outbreak of gunfire had come close to paralyzing Thomas Kidd. It stunned him to imagine anyone had found his secret compound, much less that the unknown enemies could mount a raid and take him by surprise. The shock had lasted but a heartbeat, though, before Kidd told himself the law had found them somehow. But no sooner had the notion taken shape than he rejected it. Lawful authorities, he knew from prior experience, came bearing papers from the courts, announcing their arrival with all manner of lights and sirens, demanding surrender before they opened fire.
Which told him that the men around his camp were outlaws, like himself. How had they come to be here at the very moment of his wedding? And why had they attacked like this, without apparent motive?
There was no time, in the heat of battle, to answer such questions, and Kidd had barely drawn his revolver when the answer came to him, as plain as day. Along the west side of the compound, several raiders were already breaking from the trees. One of the faces shown to him by firelight was familiar, after all.
Carlos Ramirez!
Kidd had known the cocaine lord was coming for another boat. The bargain they had struck was lucrative for all concerned. He had expected the Colombians to show up sometime following his wedding ceremony, while the celebration was in progress, to join in the festivities. Now, instead, here they were with guns blazing, and led by Ramirez himself!
Logic meant nothing in a fight for life. It didn't matter why Ramirez and his men had gone back on the bargain, shifting from allies to mortal enemies.
All that mattered now was stopping them-and that meant stopping them forever, dead in their tracks. His first shot had been aimed at Carlos, but Kidd rushed it, jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it, the way he had been taught, and the bullet had missed by inches. Ramirez had gone to ground, beyond the firelight, and then everyone had been firing at once. Billy Teach had found his M-60 machine gun, staggering to battle with it tucked beneath one arm, his shirt and denim pants still reeking with the remnants of his recent meal.
The Chinaman would pay for that, whatever he had done, but that wasn't Kidd's first priority. Old men could wait their turn to die, when there were younger men with guns around, demanding his attention at the moment.
One of those, in fact, was charging Kidd's position, firing from the hip with some kind of stubby automatic weapon. Kidd swiveled to face him, raising his revolver in a firm two-handed grip, sighting on the shooter's chest before he squeezed off two quick rounds.
The young Colombian was staggered, lurching sideways, firing even as he fell. The bullets raised a storm of dust between himself and Kidd, but none came close enough to cause the pirate chieftain any harm. Instead, he watched his dying enemy collapse, twitch once and then go slack in death.
Around him, as he scanned the compound, Kidd saw numbers of his own men sprawled among the slain. He gave up counting at a dozen, knowing that there had to be more, but he believed their enemies were still outnumbered. If his men stood fast, despite the sudden illness that had weakened them before the sneak attack, they had a chance.
And if they won the fight, what then?
That problem had to wait until another time. He saw Ramirez now, just rising from behind the cook fire in his fancy clothes, the jacket spoiled by soot or gun smoke, Kidd couldn't say which. Nor did it matter, as the pirate leader rushed his business partner turned would-be assassin, closing the gap between them with long, loping strides.
/> Ramirez saw him coming, but it was too late. The drug lord swung his weapon to the left, in Kidd's direction, finger clenching on the trigger, but he had already spent the magazine and was rewarded with only a sharp metallic clicking as the hammer fell upon an empty chamber.
Kidd wasn't about to waste his golden opportunity. The revolver thrust in front of him, he squeezed off three rounds and watched the bullets strike his target, the once-stylish jacket rippling with the impact of his lethal rounds. Ramirez staggered, dropped to one knee, staring back at Kidd before he toppled slowly onto his back.
One down, Kidd thought, but taking Carlos down wasn't the same thing as a victory. Kidd's crew and his community wouldn't be safe as long as one of the attackers lived.
"Come on, you scurvy swabs!" he shouted to his men who were still alive and fit to fight. "Have at 'em, lads, and get it done! It's time to be true pirates again!"
REMO MET CHIUN EMERGING from the shattered back wall of a thatch-roofed hut. The Master Emeritus of Sinanju had four women with him, one of whom was Stacy Armitage. She wore some kind of formal gown that had been pinned beneath her arms and ripped along the seams, revealing shapely legs. A handmade diadem of flowers sat atop her head, askew and dangling from one side, although she didn't seem to notice it. She recognized him in the darkness, and her mouth fell open like the jaw hinge had suddenly broken. She made noises as if she were trying to speak but couldn't.
"Looks like I missed the party," Remo said.
"You are certainly tardy," Chiun squeaked in irritation.
"I had to catch a ride from where you dropped me off," Remo explained. "I would have walked, but you know how it is."
"Excuses," Chiun snapped. "Now clean up this mess while I convey these young women to a safer place."
Remo knew better than to argue, even with the sound of automatic weapons hammering his eardrums from the far side of the hut. Chiun was moving toward the tree line with the women, even as Remo prepared to join the shindig in the pirate compound. Stacy seemed as if she had something to say, but simply squeezed his hand before she followed Chiun into the night.
He went in through the open back wall of the hut. A bullet slapped into the wall as Remo neared the entrance, but he paid it no attention. Peering out into the camp, he glimpsed a strange, surrealistic battlefield, where pirates brandished swords along with modern firearms, squaring off against opponents dressed in flashy suits and pointy shoes.
The strangest, and least pleasant, aspect of the battle was the smell.
Remo could only guess who the invaders were, but it was no concern of his. They weren't police-that much was obvious-and he wouldn't allow them to impede his mission. Now that he had found the pirate stronghold, and Stacy was out of the way with Chiun, he knew exactly what he had to do.
He slipped outside, keeping to the shadows, watching the gunners he could see. A ragged-looking pirate came at Remo, slashing at him with a cutlass in his left hand and a metal hook that had replaced his right. Remo ducked the blade, grabbed the hook and maneuvered it. The pirate saw what was coming even if he didn't understand how it was happening.
"Yo-ho-ho," Remo said, then with a lightning stroke forced the pirate to rip his own throat open. A spray of bullets rippled past him, and he sidestepped them instinctively. Remo sought the shooter and found one of the raiders scowling at him, grappling with a compact weapon that was either jammed or empty. Remo closed the gap between them in a flash, moved around the SMG his adversary swung as if it were a club and struck back with an open hand. The shooter's head snapped backward, eyes already glazing, as the front of his skull shattered and sent shrapnel ripping through his brain.
Remo moved through the grappling, cursing combatants like a shadow of death. He was everywhere at once, lashing out, thrusting, jabbing with stiffened fingers like daggers. Wherever he paused for a heartbeat, another man died on one side or the other, pirate or invader. At the same time they were so engrossed in their loud, confused melee they never even suspected he was there as they continued killing one another without letup, guns rattling, blades flashing, doing Remo's work for him.
It struck him that the pirates seemed to be at a disadvantage, even with their greater numbers on the battlefield. Most of them had a sickly look about them, as if the attack had caught them in the middle of a grievous hangover or bout of ptomaine poisoning. It had something to do with the ungodly stench about the place. He didn't stop to consider it now-he was on a roll and headed for the finish line.
He came up on the blind side of a pirate with wild red hair, who was strafing the camp with a modified M-60 machine gun, three of the stylish invaders jittering before him as the bullets tore into their bodies. Remo let him finish it before he slipped an arm around the gunner's neck and twisted sharply, hearing the snap-crackle-pop of vertebrae as they separated, shearing through the spinal cord and cutting off all signals to the angry brain.
The killing ground fell silent, but one figure still remained upright. Remo had never seen the man before, but from his garb, he guessed that this was a ranking officer-if not the leader-of the pirate crew. He held a shiny automatic revolver in one hand and raised it.
The pirate discharged the weapon. Remo approached him, walking.
The gun fired again. And again. The final three shots were fired from just a few steps away, and confusion etched itself in the features of the pirate as his target refused to drop. When the pistol's hammer clicked down on an empty chamber, the pirate flung it aside with a sound of disgust and drew the sword that weighted down the left side of his belt. The blade was long and highly polished, glinting in the firelight.
"You don't have the same look as these other scurvy bastards," the pirate said.
"I'm alone," Remo replied.
The pirate glanced around, saw bodies scattered everywhere and said, "It would appear that I am, too."
"It's over," Remo said, advancing slowly toward the sole survivor of the pirate crew.
"Is it?" He wore a crooked smile. "I started on this island alone and look what I built. I'll do it again."
"Yeah, but why?" Remo asked. "I mean, what's with all this Captain Hook stuff?"
Still smiling, Kidd lunged forward with the sword, but Remo dodged easily. The pirate tried a backhand slash that would have left him headless if it had connected, but the blade sliced empty air instead.
"You're quick, my friend," the pirate said.
"That's only half of it."
"Indeed?"
"I'm not your friend," said Remo.
"I suppose I'll have to kill you, then."
So saying, his assailant charged, sword flashing overhead and down toward Remo's face. It would have split his skull down to the shoulders if he had been willing to stand still and wait for it, but Remo was in motion even as the strike began. He removed the sword from the pirate's hand. It was strong, old steel but it snapped easily enough at the hilt.
"God! Oh no!" Kidd exclaimed.
"What?" Remo asked, snapping the blade again and again until it was nothing more than a handful of inch-wide scraps that tumbled into the dirt. The hilt fell there, too.
"That was the sword of my grandfathers!" the pirate said.
"I don't think they need it anymore."
"That sword shed blood around the world," he moaned. "The Kidd family terrorized the oceans for generations."
"So you're just following in your father's footsteps? That's why?" Remo asked.
Captain Kidd spit angrily. "That on my father. He was a pathetic loser, no better than his father. I was the first real man in the Kidd family in generations-the first Kidd in a century to devote himself to the calling that is our heritage."
Remo guffawed. "Kidd? As in Captain Kidd? Come on!"
"Don't laugh at my family name, swine!"
"Oh, sorry, I'll try to show a little respect for the human slime that drips from your family tree. I got news for you, Cap'n-rapists and murderers are nothing but scumbags, even if they did wear white puffy sh
irts."
Kidd made a guttural noise of fury and charged Remo with bare fists.
At that moment the killing ground was shattered by a piercing sound like a doggie squeeze-toy played through the amplifiers at a rock concert. "Hold!" Remo knew better than to disobey a thundersqueak like that. He put out one hand and gripped Captain Kidd by the scalp. Kidd flailed at Remo's face, then his arms. Remo lifted him high enough off the ground that further struggles caused excruciating scalp pain.
"Do not dare to kill that man, Remo Williams!"
"I'm not, see!" Remo shot back. "But why, I wanna know?"
"He must be questioned," Chiun, Master Emeritus of Sinanju, declared solemnly.
Huh, thought Remo. He could feel it coming. Finally. "This guy's got nothing to tell us. And Smitty wants him dead."
"You do not know this," Chiun retorted.
"Have you see my official job description? It's just two words-'Kill people.' If Smitty sends me after somebody, I'm supposed to assassinate 'em and that's that."
Chiun stood before him. "And you'll get the chance, but first we talk."
"I will tell you nothing, cook!" Kidd said through gritted teeth as he struggled in Remo's grip.
"This is the Island of Many Skulls," Chiun said matter-of-factly.
Captain Kidd stopped struggling. He hung there, almost on his tiptoes with his face and neck stretched out absurdly by the hold Remo had on the top of his head. All that was ignored now as he gazed wide-eyed at Chiun.
After a moment, Kidd said one word in a near whisper. "Sinanju!"
Chiun's head moved in the briefest of nods. "You are the Master?"
Chiun nodded again.
"Hey, I am, too," Remo spoke up.
"Actually, he is simply the Reigning Master," Chiun explained. "I am the Master Emeritus."
"Oh, brother." Remo rolled his eyes.
Kidd looked from Chiun to Remo and back again. "You killed my great-great-great-grandfather!"
"Not me personally," Chiun said, frowning with his forehead. "But one of my own forebears rid this part of the world of the man who settled this island once, centuries ago."
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